Earlier this year, the Pentagon adopted guidelines for screening hundreds of veterans who were exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq. Among those to be offered medical examinations are roughly two dozen soldiers from the 811th Ordnance Company and others who worked with or treated them after their exposure in 2003. After repeated requests, the Army has declassified a document that appears to answer the question: What was in the barrels – some of which were leaking – that the soldiers had contact with?

The Pentagon has offered a detailed response to a slate of proposed military pay and benefits reforms, rejecting the idea of overhauling the military health care system but giving a cautious green light to fundamentally changing military retirement benefits. President Obama is holding off on endorsing controversial recommendations to reform the military retirement and healthcare systems. The president said a recommendation to reform the retirement system needs more study, given its complexity.

A team of high-tech experts who helped fix the White House’s healthcare.gov website after its botched rollout in 2013 is working at the Pentagon with a new mission: fixing the broken system for transferring military health records over to the Veterans Affairs Department. It’s part of a broader effort to step up the military’s computer literacy and cyber skills, and the first task will be “working on seamlessly transferring health care records” between the two agencies.

The under secretary of the Army on Wednesday apologized for the military’s treatment of American service members exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq, and he announced new steps to provide medical support to those with lingering health effects and to recognize veterans who had been denied awards. A Pentagon working group’s new instructions, which were distributed to the military services in recent days, would ensure that hundreds of veterans identified by the services, or who had called a hotline set up at Defense Secretary Hagel’s …

A congressionally appointed commission studying military pay and compensation is preparing to issue its recommendations. The administration and Congress are looking to reduce the cost of military benefits amid Pentagon budget tightening. Military advocacy groups oppose reducing benefits that have previously been promised.

A House subcommittee has rejected a Pentagon plan to consolidate Tricare Prime, Standard and Extra into a single system that would have resulted in higher heath care fees for nearly all Tricare beneficiaries. But the debate over the future of the military’s health program is far from over.